


Mischief Managed, Elementary Edition

by MerakiForest



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Kindergarten & Pre-school, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Best Friends, Childhood, Comedy, Elementary School, Friendship, Fun, Gen, Humor, Marauders Fest 2020, Mischief, Trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28849347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerakiForest/pseuds/MerakiForest
Summary: James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter are always looking for ways to cause trouble in class but one afternoon they find themselves turning their mischievous minds towards saving their friend Patricia from a dreaded spelling test...
Relationships: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Marauders Fest 2020





	Mischief Managed, Elementary Edition

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt B49: kindergarten/pre-school AU
> 
> This was such a fun prompt to think about and work on. Thank you so much to whoever suggested it! And many thanks to the mods for putting this fest up! I can't wait to read the other stories.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Peter asked with a nervous gulp. He wiped his sweaty hands against the jeans snug on his thighs before tugging nervously at the edge of his t-shirt.

"Trust me," James grinned as he rubbed his chubby little hands together excitedly. "This is going to be awesome."

Remus twirled one of his brown curls anxiously as he talked around the sleeve cuff he was chewing. "We're probably going to get in trouble."

"Of course we are!" Sirius chirped with a giggle. "But it'll be worth it!"

His shiny black hair ruffled in the breeze that blew by and his pale fingers mindlessly tugged at the tangles he always ended up with after a good tussle with James. There were a few wood chips still clinging in his hair, making him look like a Wild Thing after a rumpus. 

"My mom isn't going to let me play on the Nintendo for a week if I bring home another note from the teacher," Peter groaned.

"Take one for the team!" Sirius insisted as he punched his friend in the shoulder.

"OW!" Peter cried before he punched Sirius in the leg.

"Guys," Remus muttered around his sleeve, "you're going to make us get in trouble before we even really do anything!"

"Shut uuuup!" James whined at the two bickering friends. "We need to work together!"

James Potter prided himself on being the leader of the little group of friends, but it was difficult work trying to keep all the other boys in line. Sirius liked to pick fights with everyone and most kids weren't as amenable to it as James himself was. 

"What are you boys up to?" came a voice from above them and all four boys squeaked in surprise. 

"Lily!" James cried in dismay. "No spying on us!"

"You're hiding behind the slide," she stated easily as she hung upside down from the platform that housed the slide. "Not a good spot for privacy."

"Mind your own business!" Sirius huffed.

"You'll get in trouble," she insisted, completely ignoring the boys' protests. "And if you try to bother Severus again I'm going to tell on you."

"Tattle tale!" James yelled in annoyance.

"Meanies!" she shot back.

"We weren't even going to mess with him!" Sirius growled. It wasn't a half-bad idea, he thought to himself, but it wasn't what they were planning. "Go away, Lily!"

"Whatcha guys doing back here?" Dorcas asked as she stepped behind the slide. "I could hear you fighting."

"They're trying to get in trouble again," Lily explained.

"Only sort of," Remus defended.

"Lily's a tattle tale!" James added.

"We were just going to put slime in Ms. McGonagall's bottle of hand sanitizer!" Peter jumped in. "It's not that bad!"

"Peter!" James and Sirius cried out in annoyance.

Remus looked relieved. He hadn't exactly been keen on the idea, although mostly because that would mean they wouldn't have actual sanitizer for their hands after Recess was over and he didn't want to have lunch with dirty hands.

"That's dumb," Lily sighed. "Couldn't you guys do something actually funny for once?" 

"You're dumb," Sirius grumbled as he crossed his arms over his chest. "It's not like you could do anything better."

Lily rolled her body forward to flip off the platform with practiced ease and then smoothed down her already dirt-caked overalls. James tweaked one of her bright red pigtails and she slapped his hand in annoyance. 

"I thought that the plastic wrap under the glue bottle lids was funny," Dorcas tried to defend. 

Lily pursed her lips in thought and Sirius puffed his chest in pride. 

"That was my idea," he exclaimed. "Remus did a good job with it too!"

Remus blushed shyly, rubbing at his scarred nose with the wet sleeve cuff. His green hoodie and jeans hung loosely on his petite frame making him look even smaller than he was. Being so small and the only child at the small private elementary school that needed to take daily medication for seizures, Remus was always down on himself and never knew how to handle the praise his three friends were so gracious to shower on him. 

"Remus always does a good job," James laughed. He slung an arm around the boy's shoulders and gave a soft squeeze.

"Children!" Ms. McGonagall called out from by the gate. "Time to come in!"

Sirius took hold of James' hand and they ran to be at the front of the line like they always were. Peter nudged Remus with his shoulder and the two boys followed behind Lily and Dorcas. 

"That glue trick was kind of fun," he chuckled.

"Don't tell James or Sirius," Lily warned as she waggled her pointer finger, "but it was kind of funny to see Ms. McGonagall fighting with the glue bottles." She giggled after the admittance and the other three children grinned.

"No dawdling!" Ms. McGonagall snapped as all the children finally fell into line. "And empty your pockets of any animals before we get back into the building," she added with a meaningful look at James and Sirius. She didn't want a repeat of the toad incident.

Once all the children were gathered back into the building and set loose in the cafeteria, Remus and Peter caught up to James and Sirius who were standing beside their friend Trish.

"What's the matter?" Remus asked before he lifted his arm and began chewing on the sleeve cuff again. Peter grimaced at the gesture before turning his attention to the older girl.

Patricia Rakepick was the coolest person that they knew, a 5th grader who was off to the upper ranks of Middle School next year. Her long copper hair was currently twisted back into a bun with her favorite pen tucked through it. She groaned in frustration and banged her head against the lunch table next to her plate of pizza.

"I'm doomed, guys," she grumbled. "So no stories today."

"She's got a test," James explained with authority. "It's bad."

"What kind?" Remus asked.

"Spelling," she sighed. "Mr. Slug got mad because we all forgot that the test was today so he didn't even let us bring our books to lunch." She glanced around cautiously before lifting her plate to reveal a smuggled spelling book underneath. "I've been trying to get some studying done between bites, but it's slow going with having to be sneaky."

"That's awful," Peter sympathized. "I hope you do okay on it."

"Thanks," she groaned before banging her head against the table. "Dad won't let me watch the Holyhead Harpies game tonight if I fail again."

All four boys took their lunches to another table with heavy hearts and slumped shoulders. Trish was always so helpful to them and told them lots of good stories and even gave advice on pranks to pull. Her mother was a teacher at the school, so she would always stick around and help with the younger children in the afterschool program. While Remus and Peter's moms would always come pick them up right after school, Sirius and James were often left in the extended afterschool program and had grown quite attached to their honorary sister. 

"We've got to do something!" James whispered as he pulled out his sandwich. "She's our friend and we can't let her fail!"

"But what could we do?" Peter protested. "We can't help her study and it's not like we can make the tests disappear or something."

Sirius had been chewing on his lip thoughtfully before suddenly straightening up at Peter's words.

"Wait a minute, guys!" he whispered back. Cautious grey eyes caught sight of Ms. McGonagall giving their group a suspicious glance but when she didn't move to check on them he continued. "What if we could?"

"How would we do that?" Remus asked in surprise before munching on his seaweed snack. The other three boys had already gotten used to the strange lunches that his self-proclaimed "crunchy" mama packed for him. "It's not like we have magic or anything."

"We don't have magic, but we do have a secret weapon!" Leaning in closer with his eyes wide and mouth twisted in a mischievous grin, Sirius didn't make them wait long before he explained. "We've got Peeves."

Four sets of shifty eyes glanced over at the short and stocky man currently standing by the trash bins heckling students that came up to toss their lunch remains. Peeves was one of the school's maintenance men, one who had been there the longest despite the fact that he didn't ever seem to do as much as the other workers. He was well known for antagonizing the teachers and other staff members with his juvenile sense of humor and his staunch refusal to "grow up."

The student gossip line had spread the story for many years that Peeves was an escaped convict from a jail for crazy people and would have long been fired by the Principal Dumbledore except that he had some kind of major blackmail against everyone at the school. It was exactly the kind of stories that made many of the children wary of the odd man, but also made him irresistible to children like James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter. They had befriended him within the first few weeks of school and it was in fact Peeves who had christened them with their gang name - the Marauders.

They had looked the word up in the dictionary a few times to remind themselves of what it meant and were proud to have earned such a cool secret name from an adult. 

James nodded solemnly. "Do you think he would give us the keys to the room?"

"I can ask," Sirius offered with a shrug. 

"No way," Remus argued around a mouthful of quinoa. "Ms. McGonagall would be on you before you could even ask anything."

"Grr, that's probably true..."

Peter swallowed down his bite of grilled cheese sandwich and nodded. "I could do it. She wouldn't notice me, especially if you and James did something dumb to catch her attention."

"That shouldn't be too hard!" James agreed. "Let's go bother Lily and Severus!"

"Yeah!" SIrius agreed, and off the two boys went. Remus rolled his eyes and got back to work on his lunch after patting Peter on the shoulder for luck.

In less than three minutes Ms. McGonagall was escorting Sirius and James back to their table and Peter was walking back with a bag of skittles. Remus was putting away all of his empty utensils and containers in his lunchbox as James took the bag of sweets and divided them among the group.

"What's the news?" James asked in a whisper. 

"He's going to put the key to the room under the pillow in the nurse's office," Peter whispered. "Said Remus could pick it up while he's waiting for his medicine."

"Genius!" Sirius squeaked.

"Okay, so we have a key, but what are we doing with it?" Remus asked. "I don't know where Mr. Slug keeps his spelling tests."

"Peeves said he'd put them on the table for us," Peter slurred around his colorful mouthful. 

James was absolutely beaming. "After you get your meds, Remus, just stop by the room and grab the tests, okay?"

He nodded before popping a blue treat in his mouth. "I'll just shove them in my waistband. Then bring them here."

The boys gave each other fist bumps and joked around for a few minutes until Remus was getting up and heading to Ms. McGonagall for his hall pass. Severus was making faces at them from behind Lily's lunchbox and Sirius started throwing some vaguely threatening gestures at him while James kept his body between Sirius and the teacher's table. Peter snickered and stuck out his tongue when Lily looked over at them with a frown. 

She leaned over to Marlene and soon there was a group of girls making faces at them while Severus snickered in amusement. James gave up his attempts to run interference and instead he and Peter turned their full attention to making faces back at the girls. In no time at all Remus was back with his friends and giving them strange looks. 

"I got it," he leaned over and whispered.

Sirius tugged on the hem of the hoodie. "Right now?"

Remus shook his head vigorously, tawny hair flopping over his forehead. "I tossed the test booklet in the bathroom trash can."

"Nice!" Sirius exclaimed before putting his hand up for a high five.

"But wait, guys!" James gasped as he looked at the clock nervously. "What if he decides to wring it?"

"Wring it?" Peter asked in confusion.

"Yeah! Like, take the study book and make up a test?"

"Ohhh," the other three replied.

"But what can we do?" Peter asked before biting his lip nervously.

"Give me the key, Remus," Sirius whispered. Remus nodded and after glancing around to make sure that no one was watching he slipped the key into his friend's pudgy hand. "I'll be right back."

He stood up and went to Ms. McGonagall's side and soon Sirius was swaggering down the hall with a bathroom pass. In five minutes he was back looking quite pleased with himself. 

"What didja do?" James asked, eyes wide behind his smudged glasses.

"I took some of the spelling books from the students' desk!" he whispered back excitedly. "And threw them in the trash too!"

"That's so smart!" Peter replied in awe. 

"But I couldn't fit all the books down my trousers," he grumbled. "So, you two have to hurry up and use the bathroom pass too! Hurry up or we'll be out of time!"

"I'll go next!" James offered, but Remus grabbed his arm.

"Ms. McGonagall will be super suspicious if you go right after Sirius. Let' Peter go."

Peter was already reaching forward and accepting the key from Sirius. "I'll be right back, guys."

Minerva was already looking suspicious having three of her four troublemakers going out, so James did his best to look as innocent as possible. He talked loudly about the new bike that his parents got him and how he was already the best on his spring soccer team. When Peter got back he "accidentally" spilled water down his shirt and asked to go to the restroom to use the hand dryer on it.

By the time he got back, all the students were gathering their things and heading off to the different classes. James grabbed Sirius' hand happily and offered a wink before they were rushing to the front of the line. Remus and Peter cautiously glanced over at Mr. Slughorn's class and fell into a fit of giggles as they whispered about what the man's reaction was going to be when he got back to the classroom.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the story! I've been sick and dealing with a lot of stuff the past few months so I haven't been very active here or on Tumblr but I'm planning on getting back. ;) You can find me on Tumblr at @MerakiForest if you want to chat!


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